Chapter Nine
Josie
Two months later
“Lila, we need to talk,” I said into my phone as I exited the hospital and climbed into my car. “I'm coming over right now, so you better be there.”
My heart raced as I disconnected the call. My mom's chemo treatments were done, and the cancer was in remission—for now, anyway. The chances of it coming back, though, were fairly high. We were looking at another surgery in the next coming months, which meant she'd need someone to stay home with her during the day.
That led me to make the decision to drop out of school for the time being to be her full-time caregiver. Not that I really had a lot of choice in the matter. Finding an outside one was too expensive, making it non-starter. And there was nobody but me who could do it.
That, however, was the least of my worries. As I drove over to Lila's house, I prayed that I was just under a lot of stress, given everything going on. Stress could most definitely help explain the lack of my period since the cruise. I was a month late—a whole freaking month!
A few days was one thing, but four weeks was just way too much, and I'd just been too busy to take care of it. Now, though, I had no choice. I had a couple pregnancy tests in a bag on the passenger's seat of my car as I raced over to her house. I was scared to death and I needed my best friend's support to sit with me as I took them.
My phone rang just as I was pulling up outside her house.
“What's wrong, Josie?” Lila asked, her tone genuinely concerned.
“I can't talk about it over the phone,” I said, my voice shaking. “Please, I just need you.”
“Come on over, sweetie,” she said.
I heard her talking to someone in the background as she muffled the phone.
“I'm, uh—I'm already outside your place,” I said.
“Wow. That was fast,” she said. “Alright, come on in.”
I felt tears well up in my eyes and my heart racing. Adrenaline flowed through my body and I was trembling. This couldn't be happening. Not to me. It just couldn't. I'd always been so good, never sleeping around. Hell, I'd had sex once. Once! Sure, it was unprotected, but what were the odds that the one time I have sex, I get knocked up?
Call me naive, but I assumed I'd be safe. I'd looked at ovulation cycles afterward and things looked fine. I wasn't worried about it. Not at first. But, as the days went by and I still hadn't gotten my period, I grew more and more concerned. I knew I should have gone in for the morning after pill once we got back from the cruise, just to be 100 percent sure, but life got in the way as it always seemed to do. And now, because of life getting in the way, I had to deal with—this.
I climbed out of the car and walked up to her front door just as Lila’s boyfriend walked out. I waved, he waved back, but I still couldn’t look him in the eye after seeing his bare ass on the cruise. I’d thought it was a one-time performance and that Lila wasn’t going to see him again. Obviously, I’d been wrong. I’d apparently been wrong about a lot of things regarding that damn cruise.
“Hey, Josie,” he said.
“Hey, Jason,” I muttered back.
We passed each other by, and Lila greeted me at the door, her face a mask of worry.
“Come in,” she said.
Her hair was ruffled, and her clothes were ragged, which meant that she and Jason were probably in the middle of having sex. And I’d interrupted. Again. Go figure. Back on the ship, she’d sworn the two of them wouldn’t see each other again, but apparently, he’d found her on Facebook and the rest was, as they say, history.
Me, I hadn’t heard a peep from Gavin. Not that I had ever really expected to. He didn’t seem like the type who’d search me out on Facebook. I reminded myself for the millionth time that it had just been a fling. A one-night thing. A one time, never to be repeated performance. I went into it knowing that. I couldn’t blame him for it, because he’d never pretended to be anything but a one-nighter for me.
I tried to move on. Tried to date other guys without the whole virgin stigma hanging over me anymore. But I inevitably wound up disappointed. None of the guys I went out with got me the way Gavin had. And none of them turned me on like he had. I still kept running away every time things got intimate and wound up pleasuring myself to memories of that one, hot night on the cruise ship.
And like the men I dated, I wound up disappointed every time I had to get myself off. Yeah, I orgasmed, but it was nowhere near as good or intense as it had been with Gavin. I felt like I was trying to grab puffs of smoke, chasing something I'd never catch.
But that was neither here nor there at the moment. There were a hell of a lot bigger things on my plate to worry about in that moment than my return to having absolutely no sex life. Lila and I sat down on her sofa, and instantly, the tears started to fall.
“Still haven't got your period, huh?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I just knew it would come once the surgery was over and thing calmed down with my mom,” I said, sniffing loudly. “I honestly figured it was just stress, but—”
“You have tests,” she asked, motioning toward my Rite-Aid bag. “It very well could be the stress, hon.”
I nodded and held up the bag. “In here.” I say.
“Good,” she sighed. “Let's get you some answers. No use freaking out if you're not actually pregnant.”
“What else could it be?” I asked. “I'm a month late, Lila.”
She shrugged. “Female problems? I hear of weird shit all the time, but I'm no gyno, so…”
She reached for the bag and opened it, grabbing one of the boxes inside and tearing it open. She pulled out the instructions and then read over them as I stared down at my hands, which were clasped in my lap, in silence. She handed me the stick and gave me a small smile.
“Go pee on this,” she said. “Then we wait.”
I took the test in hands that were trembling and walked into her hall bathroom. I took the test and placed it on a piece of toilet paper and then sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, calling Lila in to wait with me. She gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and leaned against the bathroom door as I sat there on the toilet, my head in my hands.
“What am I going to do, Lila?” I cried, big, fat tears rolling down my cheeks. “I can't be pregnant. I just can't be.”
“There's only one person who could be the father, right?” Lila asked. “I mean, if you are pregnant, that is.”
I nodded. “Only person I've slept with.”
“Right, okay,” she muttered, pacing the small bathroom. “If this test comes back positive, we're going to need to contact him and—”
“No,” I said, eyes wide, a jolt of fear shooting through my body. “We absolutely cannot contact him. I don't even know him, Lila.”
“But he is the father of your baby,” she says. “And if it comes back positive, you shouldn't have to do this alone.”
She had a point, but I still shook my head. Finding and contacting Gavin was the last thing I wanted, especially for something like this. I had no idea how he'd react to the news. And I had absolutely no desire to force him to be with me if he wasn't into a relationship and a kid. He led a lifestyle that told me his priorities were elsewhere. And that he wasn't really in a place to deal with something that radically life-altering.
“I can't be pregnant. I can't be pregnant,” I kept repeating over and over again, hoping if I said it enough times, it would be true.
“It's time,” Lila said, looking at her watch.
We both stared at each other for a long moment, the sense of dread and foreboding growing within me with each passing second. Slowly, and with a hand shaking so bad, you'd think I had palsy, I reached for the stick. I hadn't read the instructions, so when I looked at the little window on the thing, I had no idea what it meant. I showed it to Lila, my eyes wide and tears rolling down my face.
“Christ on a cracker, Josie,” Lila said, and she actually sounded happy.
“What? Is it negative?” I asked, starting to feel hopeful.
“No, sweetie,” she said, her eyes and voice softening. “You're pregnant, Josie. You're going to be a mommy.”
My heart sank and everything inside me froze. This had to be a dream. It just had to be. There was no way I was pregnant. There was no way I could be. Not with everything else going on. I couldn't afford for it to be true.
Lila took my hands and pulled me up, hugging me close. “We're going to spoil this baby so fucking much. Josie,” she said. “Just think about how much fun it'll be.”
Fun, sure. Except I had enough student loan debt to choke a horse. I had no career to fall back on because I'd had to drop out of school. And I had a mother who needed me twenty-four hours a day, seven days week.
Yeah, that sure sounded like a lot of fun.
A baby was something I wanted—someday. A baby was something I wanted when I had a husband and a home of my own. When I had a career. When I was financially secure. A baby wasn't something I wanted right now. Wasn't something I could deal with having right now. As I looked at the stick again, knowing it said I was pregnant, I couldn't stop the feeling of doom and despair from washing over me.
“There's no way I can take care of a child, Lila,” I cried. “I can hardly take care of myself.”
“Sh, sweetie,” she said, stroking my face and wiping away my tears. “We'll figure it out. I promise you that we will figure it out. You're not alone, remember?”
Except, of course, I was alone. She could help me, sure. But, Lila had her own life. Her own career. Her own boyfriend. She had a million different things going on in her own life. The last thing she needed was to be a part-time nanny for my child. A child I didn't want.